Sunday, October 19, 2014

This week seems to have flown by...we have
been trying all transfer to get our area better, and we have had some
success, but this last week was hard because it seemed like nobody was
available. We tried and tried, with very little success, but on the
bright side, we were able to work with the less-active members more and
we finally got to meet with Jose Guzman, he is the guy that was baptized
right before I came to the area, but he hasn't been very active since.
We got to talk to him a little and he said he should be able to start
going to seminary again and he should start coming to church again soon
because their band mainly stops marching when football season ends. I am
excited to be working with the less-actives and recent-converts again
because it seems that when we are doing what we can to help them, the
rest of the work blooms.

I don't really have
much to say about this week, except for that there were a couple of
thunderstorms and it is obvious that winter is coming. We are all kind
of hoping that a hurricane happens this year because the heat left so
early, leaving about 2-2.5months for hurricanes to possibly come. I
don't want a hurricane to happen, but it would be exciting because they
evacuate us until it is gone, then they put us back in to help for the
next couple of weeks. it sounds super interesting/fun.

Other
than that, I am officially halfway done with training Elder Heath and I
am probably getting transferred in 6 weeks, so just a heads up for
that. I feel like this next transfer will have more success and some
baptisms though because we got good news from one of the ward leaders
about how easy it should be for Suyapa and Jorge to get married, so when
we teach them tonight, we are going to include talking more about
marriage and try to have them set a date.

I love you guys, and pictures should come this next week because I keep forgetting my camera cord when I email.

This week was an interesting week, yesterday I was
wondering why it felt like we didn't really do anything, but then I
looked through my planner and realized, we only had 2 full days to work!
We had P-Day on Monday, then New Missionary Training on Wednesday,
Weekly Planning on Thursday, and General Conference on Saturday and
Sunday. This week was miraculous for us, seeing that we only had 2 full
days to work, we helped our four most solid families progress a lot, and
they really have the desire to move forward, but it seems like there
are still concerns or issues that we have to address to help them come
to church. We have taken the time to thoroughly think about them and
their situations and we feel like we have made realistic goals that will
make them stretch to reach.

We have still been
getting along well as a companionship, obviously there are a few quirks
along the way, but we are trying to find ways to keep having fun while
working hard. I particularly want to do that because I am starting to
stress quite a bit about the area and the people. I am really trying to
think of how we can help them, and what we can do each day to prepare
the way for them to come to church and eventually accept the covenant of
baptism. I feel more like a missionary than ever, but I have felt more
stress than sometimes I think I should. I look forward to this next week
and transfer and the success it will bring because we have been working
hard and doing our best to bring about this work, and the Lord has been
blessing us for it.

I love you guys, and could you pray for some of the people that we are teaching?

Elvia Cuervo and her family - That they will be able to make it to church despite any difficulties that may arise

The Garcia family - That they will accept a baptismal date and actually work towards it

Suyapa and Jorge - That their baby boy will be healthy enough to go to church

Lucero and Efrain - That we will be able to teach him clearly and Efrain will accept a baptismal date

This week has been really fun and
fruitful! We have been working hard these past few weeks with very
little success, just miracles happening with us finding new people to
teach, and this week we finally have seen the work moving forward! I
believe that I told you all last week that we got a referral from some
other elders for a family that has gone to church a couple of times in
their ward because they are friends with a member there, well this week
we were able to set a baptismal date for them for October 18th, to give
us time to teach them more and to include the rest of the family and get
them all baptized the same day.

We also had a
really fun ward party on Friday, it was called the Fiestas Patrias,
where we celebrated all of the different countries that people in the
ward come from.

We had the great opportunity to have Elvia Cuervo, and
her 4 kids that live at home, come to the party. They ended up being
some of the first people there and talked with some of the members,
including the bishop. We missionaries (the 6 elders in our ward) were
able to participate too, we got to dance some of the many Hakas that are
common in the Polynesian cultures. We had Elder Mamea, who is a Samoan
that lived in Hawaii for a while, teach us. Then we got to see each of
the different groups perform. The Primary, Young Single Adults, Young
Women, and Relief Society were able to present different dances from the
native cultures of where some of our members are from. And there was
also food from the
different countries, mainly El Salvador, Mexico, and Honduras. It was a
really good experience for the Cuervo family.

This Thursday, during Hour of
Power, we were able to find a less-active that we didn't know was on our books. Her name is
Lucero, and she is married to a non-member and has a baby that is only a few
months old. We decided to stop by on Saturday because we were in the
area, and her older brother, who is a returned missionary, was there and
her husband was there as well. We ended up teaching them about the Plan
of Salvation and who God is because Lucero's husband doesn't have much of a background in religion. That conversation turned towards us talking
about Eternal Marriage. It went really well, and Lucero's brother was
really helpful in teaching because he knows them and he knows the
doctrine as well. We really saw that as a miracle because Lucero's
brother has been praying a lot for Lucero and her husband, and he was
only going to be in town for the weekend. They said that they were just
talking about us stopping by on Thursday when we knocked the door. It
seems like that kind of thing happens a lot...people talk about us, and
we show up.

We have been able to move forward
with our different investigators by teaching them very spirit-centered
lessons, and they have started to progress more. I really look forward
to the next few weeks and the opportunity that our investigators will
have to see General Conference.

And now to answer your questions mom:

1.1)
Cesar has sadly decided to not meet with us, but we hope to work with
the rest of the family so the spirit can work on him. Elvia recently has
been keeping commitments to read and she came to the party and had a
great time. We truly believe that she will be baptized in the next few
weeks as long as Cesar doesn't decide to have our lessons with her stop.

1.2)
Jorge, Suyapa's non-member "husband", is progressing well as well. They
really want to come to church and only haven't because their baby has to
live on a schedule because of it's syndrome, which makes it difficult
for them to be able to wake up for 9am church. We met with Jorge on
Saturday and had a great lesson, and we mainly concentrated on getting to
know them and having them get to know us an feel more comfortable. We
helped them understand some other things which they had questions about
and we taught them about the Priesthood and Auxiliaries to prepare them
to know what to expect at conference. They were talking about Jorge
being Elder Heath's first baptism when they get married, so we really
believe they have that desire to go forward, and we want to talk with
them about them getting their birth certificates from Honduras to get
them married.

1.3) Manuel, Cesar's friend...we
actually haven't been able to catch him because he has a crazy schedule
with school and football, and we really want Cesar there while we teach
him. We are still trying to at least get him to activities and church...

2)
yeah, I got that package, the writing on the outside was a little worn
off because it looked like it got rained on a little in Hawaii...(the package took an unplanned 'detour' to Honolulu, Hawaii, instead of the Houston, Texas address written on the package)

Week
57...I have been out 57 weeks? I hit 13 months 2 days ago. I can't
believe time goes that fast when you don't think about it....

This
week has been great for us, we have had the opportunity to work with
members quite a bit and we got referrals out of it! I love getting
member referrals because they already have the member support and they
have friends in the church, and they have someone to motivate them along
the way. We were able to get a total of 4 member referrals, and we look
forward to working with them as well as the people we already have.

We
started teaching another family that already knows members and has
actually been to church a few times. We had a very spiritual lesson with
them on Thursday, and we look forward to meeting with them tomorrow (Tuesday). With this family, on Thursday, we barely missed having the son/brother
there, so we have another potential investigator in that family. We also
taught our investigator, Elvia, again and had another spiritually
edifying lesson with her. She really enjoys what we teach and willingly
accepted the baptismal invitation as she came to understand the need of
authority.

We have also had the opportunity to
find many more less-actives, and we have had the opportunity to start
working with them. One family that we work with, the Rivera family, was
really helped by our efforts. The mother and 2 daughters came to
church on Sunday, but sadly the husband is still working on fixing his
testimony to make him want to return. We are making plans to bring our
ward mission leader to visit with him one of the days this week.

From the streets of Houston, Texas

The happy smiles of Elder Dye and Elder Heath

I
have been having a great time with Elder Heath here. Though, I feel like I am
more stressed because I know there are so many things that I need to do
and that I should be doing, but there just isn't enough time to do it
all. I have recently reviewed some goals I have and I made the goal to
finish the whole standard works before the end of my mission because I
know the scriptures bring peace, and I have felt like I don't know
enough, which adds to my stress. As I have been reading/studying over
the last few days, I have felt the stress leave and it is replaced by
the peace and knowledge of my Savior, Jesus Christ, and a deeper understanding of His
teachings.

This week we had exchanges, which
always adds a little change to the week. And what made it better is that
we had nothing set up for that whole day, so we did a lot of
contacting. We ended up going to the park and trying to find people
there, but sadly there wasn't a ton of people there, so we locked up our
bikes and went around walking. We got to the other side of the park,
and saw a bunch of geese and ducks, so I took some pictures. Then we
noticed that one looked like it had an extra head, so we asked this man
about it. He wasn't quite sure, but we just started a conversation, in
which we found out that he is a member of the church, but hasn't gone
for about 12 years... We got his information, and he went on his way.
Then we were walking back and saw a kid walking over to the soccer field
with his ball in hand, so we asked if we could play. We ended up playing a
little with him, then other kids came up and we got into a game that
lasted about 40 minutes, and during the game, we were talking with the
kids and I became like best friends with a little 8 year old girl. They
were all awesome, and after playing, we went over and talked with their
parents, and they had seen us playing with the kids, but sadly that
didn't soften their hearts enough to listen to the message, but they
knew that we were nice/good people.

Hey, it's nice to actually get an email this week :D :P I was
wondering all week whether or not Angie had the baby... I guess she did,
so now I have a second niece that I need to meet when I get home... I
just wonder how many more there are going to be because everyone is
getting settled in to different homes that are more permanent than
before... And Carolyn, you need to wait until I get home to have your
first because when I eventually get married, my kids are going to be
like 10 years younger than their cousins.... :P

This
week has been rough for our area. For whatever reason, we had a hard time getting in contact
with people the whole week. We started it off well though--on Monday,
we had the opportunity to go and contact a referral, named Cesar Cuervo,
that we got from the church headquarters, it was from a member. We went
and knocked on the door and Elvia, Cesar's wife, answered the door. She
let us in and called Cesar, who wasn't home that evening, but is really excited
to meet with us.
We just started talking with Elvia and it turns out that she has been
reading the Book of Mormon that his member friend gave him! She was also
really interested in the message we, as missionaries, bring. We ended
up teaching her about the restoration of the church and the Book of
Mormon. We had her pray at the end of the lesson to know if what we
taught was true, as well as what she's been reading in the Book of Mormon
is also true. She accepted our invitation to pray, and she
felt the spirit very strongly. God had/has prepared her, so when when we taught with the spirit, her spirit felt God's love and desire for her to learn more of His truth. It turns out that they have 6 kids; 24, 23, 16, 10, 8, and 6. I
really can't wait to teach them again. We have a lesson
scheduled at 5pm today, so we are ending P-day a little early to teach
them with a member! I am so excited and I am determined to hopefully see the fruits of my labors (and possible see the baptism of members of this family).

Sadly
the rest of the week didn't work out like that, it was a struggle. We
were in 'finding' mode this week, and we were planning/trying to have
meaningful lessons with the people we are currently teaching. Yet those plans fell through since many of the people that we are teaching haven't been able to meet with us. I have found that people are much more busier now that school has started, so they weren't
home or wouldn't be home for the lessons we would set up with them.

Answers to questions that mom had:

1)
We did the normal P-day stuff on Labor day, there were just a bunch of
members that went to the church, so that was fun, but annoying at the
same time.

2) We still have 1 hour of personal
study, 1hr companionship time, 1hr language, and now we have 1 hour of study added to our day in which we study the lessons and the basics of being a missionary.

3) My companion is an 18 year-old, he played
trombone, loves older music

4)
Working in this area is still a little harder, but we have been trying to find new people
and think of ways we can serve/work with members to get referrals

5)
Well, I don't really like telling you those things (unusual happenings) because I know you
will freak out... but if you insist, this last week I kinda got hit by a
car, and I got my first migraine on my mission. The car didn't have a
turn signal on and they started out going straight, so I started going
straight to go around them to turn left, but then they suddenly turned
and hit my front wheel. I saw what was happening and I was already off
my bike when it happened because that was all I could do, but I left
without a scrape and nothing was messed up on my bike. And the migraine-- I started to get a
migraine when we were in our apartment one morning, and I noticed it
when I started having a headache and the sensitivity to light, so I went
and got the medicine in me, and then laid down. I was fine in like 30
minutes.

6) the weather--Did I tell you that we almost got
hit by lightning one lesson? We just got freaked out because we were
outside under a covering, then lightning struck right above us.... Other
than that, it hasn't changed much for us, it is starting to get a
little colder.

7) My readings include: the Book of Mormon, Preach my Gospel, and talks for missionaries

About Me

I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and have made my decision to serve my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, for 2 years before heading to college. I've been called to serve a Spanish speaking mission in Houston Texas, and am excited to be able to invite others to come unto Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel through faith in Jesus Christ and His Atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end. Though I've always been a member of this church, it was my choice to serve a mission. I'm excited to bring the plan of happiness to others, and help them to heighten their joys here on earth, and in the eternities to come.